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Planetary Annihilation Titans

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About Planetary Annihilation Titans

Planetary Annihilation is now developed by Planetary Annihilation Inc.

Planetary Annihilation Titans is a standalone expansion to Classic Planetary Annihilation. Both are self published indie games.

As a standalone expansion you do not need classic PA. Titans owners can join and host classic PA games.

Most multiplayer and 1v1 ladder ranked players have moved to Titans.

About Planetary Annihilation Inc

Planetary Annihilation Inc is a new company with a team comprised of original PA developers and long-time community contributors focused on making PA into the best game that it can be, one ready to take full advantage of the many changes in technology since development started back in 2012.

https://planetaryannihilation.com/2018/08/17/planetary-annihilation-inc-the-future-of-pa-and-titans/

Upgrade from Classic PA

Titans is free for the original 44,000+ Kickstarter backers of classic PA from September 2012 and is 90% off (US$3.99) for all other classic PA owners.

Updates

Both games share the same engine and continue to receive updates: https://wiki.palobby.com/wiki/Planetary_Annihilation_Timeline

Another update to both games is due soon.

Content / Modding

Titans adds new units and experimentals or super units that were not part of the original Kickstarter pitch and were specifically excluded from classic PA.

Titans Overview: https://exodusesports.com/article/planetary-annihilation-titans/

PA has an active modding community including the community developed Legion Expansion faction mod for Titans: https://exodusesports.com/article/legion-expansion-community-faction-mod/

The full unit database including Legion Expansion is available here: https://palobby.com/units/ and a list of community mods is available here: https://palobby.com/community-mods/

Learning To Play

Replaced by: https://planetaryannihilation.com/guides/learning-to-play-planetary-annihilation/

Historical

Like any RTS there is a learning curve.

Try the following to ramp up quickly:

Tips for spherical planets:

  • disable pole lock and use align to north pole (default keybind: n)
  • learn to use middle mouse to grab and alt middle mouse to rotate

You will get used to playing on spherical planets. Once you do it's hard to go back to flat maps.

Specs

To support the new units, unit wreckage and multi-level terrain the minimum specs for Titans have increased to 8GB RAM (12GB or more preferred) with a quad core processor. Ideally you want dedicated graphics with at least 1GB VRAM.

The minimum specs of OpenGL 3.2+ and Shader 3.0 are supported by all modern GPUs.

There is no unit cap by design so the limit is the hardware.

You can read about sim performance, time dilation and RAM usage here: https://wiki.palobby.com/wiki/Planetary_Annihilation_Server_Sim_Performance_/_Time_Dilation_/_RAM_Usage

Out of date drivers and software that conflicts with OpenGL or network connections are the top causes of issues.

To play online you need at least 1 Mbit/s or faster reliable broadband internet connection. Avoid Wi-Fi if possible.

Like all applications, an SSD will dramatically improve startup and loading times.

No DRM / Offline

There is no DRM.

With reasonable specs you can play offline using a local server and without an internet connection.

LAN Games / Dedicated Servers

With great specs you can host multiplayer LAN games in offline mode using a single copy of PA.

If you have good internet upload and download speeds you can host multiplayer games over the internet in online or offline mode.

You can also host private or public dedicated servers: https://wiki.palobby.com/wiki/Planetary_Annihilation_Custom_/_Dedicated_/_LAN_/_Local_Servers

No Micro Payments / No Pay To Win

There are no micro payments and no pay to win.

The armory contains cosmetic commander skins from the original Kickstarter tiers and high level backers.

Human Resources Kickstarter and Negativity

There is a lot of misinformation usually posted by a small vocal minority upset that they did not receive Titans for free.

Classic PA had a rough launch in September 2014 followed by a cancelled Kickstarter for Human Resources which was based on the same engine: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/659943965/human-resources-an-apocalyptic-rts-game/

Misunderstanding, bad timing and miscommunication about ongoing development of classic PA after the 1.0 release did not help.

The Human Resources Kickstarter was cancelled slowing down engine development. All the innovation required for the art heavy Human Resources would have flowed back into Planetary Annihilation.

Development of classic PA continued with a much smaller team delivering the remaining planned features of classic PA over the next year.

Read the timeline for more info: https://wiki.palobby.com/wiki/Planetary_Annihilation_Timeline

Official Forums

https://forums.planetaryannihilation.com/categories/planetary-annihilation-titans.94/

Original Uber Entertainment Planetary Annihilation Team (2014)

Team.png

Technology

Planetary Annihilation is a cross platform client / server networked OpenGL application with a custom engine developed in 2013/2014 using C++11 and a fully moddable HTML5 user interface using Coherent UI based on Chromium.

Since 2018 the Planetary Annihilation engine had been modernised to C++17 with updated versions of third party libraries.

Historical Technology links

Game AI Pro (early approaches to tech used in Planetary Annihilation):

  • 23. Crowd Pathfinding and Steering using Flow Field Tiles (Elijah Emerson)
  • 30. Using Neural Networks to Control Agent Threat Response (Michael Robbins)

GDC 2012 Off The Beaten Path (early approaches to tech used in Planetary Annihilation):

  • 17 minutes: Neural Networks in Supreme Commander 2 (Michael Robbins)

Toolchain

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toolchain

Third Party Libraries

Crash Reporting Platform

Backtrace: https://backtrace.io/

Localisation Platform

Crowdin: https://crowdin.com/

Translations

Transfluent: https://www.transfluent.com/

Security

We recommend https://1password.com/